I did this for my Drawing for Sequential art class. The original is 10" wide. I used a .3 technical pencil to get the details.

I should reveal that I did a thumbnail at that same size and when I felt comfortable with it, traced the big shapes to make sure the perspective was somewhat ok. There are still issues, but I don't have the experience yet to figure all that out in a timely manner. At this point if I can trick most people then I feel ok, but the goal is to be accurate in every way.

I'm amazed at how well it turned out considering how busy and then on top of that how bad I felt due to allergic inanity.

As for the water, yes it looks really calm. I can see you used some white lines to give a sense of movement, but there isn't enough contrast to see then properly. That is another area I would darken digitally and play with the contrast to see if those lines give the water more life.

These are things I agree with, the issue was that the teacher wanted us to stick to a mostly line drawing without large spot blacks. The idea is that a drawing should work with just basic shapes, using overlapping and T intersections to create a readable image. This is the idea that using literally like squares and circles and triangles depending on how big they are how they overlap you would be able to create the illusion of space and a focus. If I could create the same image with just outlined shapes and have it make sense then it would be way more successful once I got to the actual shading.

It's lots to think about but eventually you start noticing things like this, I still struggle like mad with it. For example framing the picture to keep the eye in there in a pleasing way, for example the proscenium arch. This is a theater device but it also works in pictures where something closer to us frames the picture. It just needs to be like an L shape to grab one corner, here Feng Zhu uses the bottom platform in this way to frame the picture. [link] and here again it's not a clear shape [link] but it's these dark shapes around the edges that grab the eye and pushes it back into space at what we really should be looking at.

No need to analogize for being wordy when talking about art, especially here. I see what you are saying about using the arch to contain the viewer within the picture. The two triangles that it creates, the top left and right corners, slightly negate that though, I find my eye bouncing around those areas. I might crop those out of the image. holding a piece of paper over the top of the image my eye follows the circles until they hit those goblins.

The Feng Zhu pieces are good examples, but if they were just line drawings with no value I think the focal point might be lost a little as well. The piece with the large mechanical creature has an obvious focal point with it's eye, but anytime you have an eye type of shape that becomes a focal point due to our human nature. The other piece with the figure, if it didn't have high contrast, would be fighting with the crane arm next to it for attention.

so back to the point I'm trying to make. I think this is a very successful piece for the assignment, but some value and some high contrast with those goblins and there will be no question that they are the focal point.

something I might try digitally is darkening the underside of the bridge. It'll give the piece as a whole more contrast, and the lead goblin's arm is breaking that shape so it will call attention to it.

Actually that is an issue with the goblins, you weren't the only one that had trouble finding them. In critique we discussed how I could fix it, by having one of the arms of the lead one dropped so it overlaps the water. The water was an another issue, it's way too calm and looks more like glass than water.